I felt him moving around, more scraping sounds, and the wall rotated to reveal a real room with a cement floor. Light was pouring through a couple half windows high on a cinder-block wall. Boxes and paint cans were stacked on one side of the room. Beyond the boxes, I saw what looked like a water heater.
“We’re in a storeroom,” Diesel said. “Either a classroom building or a dorm.”
Diesel yelled to Hatchet to come up, and Hatchet climbed out and scrambled to his feet. One of the rats came with him. The rat looked around, and went back down the ladder. We closed the trapdoor and the rotating wall, and I punched Hatchet in the face.
“That’s for Glo,” I said.
Hatchet’s nose was bleeding, and Diesel was smiling.
“Feel better?” Diesel asked me.
“No,” I said.
I was no longer dripping, but my clothes were wet and smudged with mud from brushing against the dirt walls. Now that I wasn’t quite so terrified, I was freezing.
“We need dry clothes,” Diesel said. “Good thing credit cards are waterproof.”
We left from a basement door. It was late afternoon and there was a definite chill in the air. We had emerged from the dorm behind the Sphinx.
“I will take my leave of thee now,” Hatchet said. “I must search for my master.”
“You can take your leave as soon as you give me the stone,” Diesel said.
Hatchet feigned surprise. “Stone? What stone?”
“The Luxuria Stone,” Diesel said. “You would never have given it to Anarchy. She had no way of knowing if it was enchanted.”
“I never thought of that,” Hatchet said. “I swear, I don’t have the stone.”
Diesel grabbed Hatchet, turned him upside down, shook him, and the stone dropped onto the ground. It was a plain little brown rock, very similar to the first stone Diesel and I found.
“Make sure it’s enchanted,” Diesel said to me.
“I’d rather not touch it,” I said. “I’m not sure where he was storing it.”
“Give me a break,” Diesel said. “You’ve probably spent the last half hour walking on rat turds. Just pick the damn thing up.”
“It was in my tunic,” Hatchet said. “It wouldn’t easily fit elsewhere.”
I picked the stone up, and it hummed and vibrated in my hand and gave off heat. It wasn’t just enchanted. It was very enchanted. I’d only felt stored energy this strong in one other instance, and that was when I’d held the other SALIGIA Stone.
“It’s a SALIGIA Stone,” I said to Diesel. “I can’t tell if it’s Luxuria.”
Diesel set Hatchet on his feet. “Good luck finding Wulf. We’ll be in the Gap if you need us.”
“That was nice of you to offer help,” I said to Diesel.
“Not entirely. Anarchy has the tablet that always accompanies a stone. If she can translate the tablet, it’ll give her the name of another SALIGIA guardian. And we’ll be two steps behind in a race for that stone. I know nothing about Anarchy, except she might be Deirdre Early. Unfortunately, Early’s house burned down, so I have no clue where to find her. Wulf, on the other hand, seems to be connected to her in some way.”
We crossed Wheelock, walked past the Hopkins Center, The Hanover Inn, and turned onto Main Street. The Gap was on the left.
A couple heads turned when we walked in.
“Looks like you’ve been hiking the Appalachian Trail,” one of the
salesgirls said.
“Yeah, we slipped and fell in the river. We’re shopping for dry clothes.”